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Washington heroin coalition holds first public meeting

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Jessica Neal suffered a heroin overdose two years ago in a Washington pharmacy bathroom stall with her 2-year-old child at her side.

Neal said she’s reminded each time she looks at her daughter two years after she quit using the drug that would have killed her that day had emergency workers not revived her with the opioid antidote naloxone.

“It’s possible to get clean and stay clean,” Neal said during the first public meeting of Washington Opioid Overdose Coalition, a group aiming to deal with the crippling heroin and fentanyl epidemic in the county.

“Now, I have my kid back and work two jobs. It’s still a struggle,” said Neal, who said she contemplated suicide after the overdose and then went into long-term rehabilitation to find sobriety.

The meeting was called at Washington County Office Building to build momentum for the coalition, which formed in 2016 and has since been collecting data on various drug-related initiatives.

“We’ve reacted to it,” said Washington County District Attorney Gene Vittone. “You can’t do this yourself.”

He said the coalition has formed partnerships to dig out of the crisis that has been exasperated by the new influx of fentanyl into this country from China.

Nearly 60,000 people in the country died last year from drug overdose deaths, Vittone said.

“That’s nearly 175 a day, he said”

Acting U.S. Attorney Soo Song in Pittsburgh said fentanyl hit the United States last year “completely coming from nowhere.”

“People are ordering this stuff off of the Internet,” Song said at the meeting.

The drug also is being imported to Mexico and Canada, and law enforcement was focusing on stopping its flow into the United States, Song said.

It’s complicated to intercept because sometimes fentanyl is sent through intermediaries, she said.

“It’s being bagged up and sold as heroin,” Song said.

“How many families are struggling and suffering,” she said.

She said drug cartels can make significantly more money from 1 kilogram of fentanyl than they can from selling heroin.

About 83 percent of the 109 overdose deaths last year in Washington County involved the use of fentanyl.

The introduction of naloxone has resulted in first-responders saving more and more lives, Vittone said.

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